John Pemble

Venice Rediscovered John Pemble

What are the origins of the modern passion for Venice? In the two centuries since its political extinction, the city has been transformed into a great modern cultural symbol by the work of prominent intellectual and literary figures such as Ruskin, Proust, Mann, and Henry James. This work seeks to show how American and European outsiders developed an obsession with the idea of a dying city which must be preserved at all costs, and to reveal aspects of the development of modern Western sensibility.